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May 21, 2012

It appears that Google Chrome finally overtook Microsoft Internet Explorer as the world's most popular browser last week—at least according to statistics fromthe web analytics service Statcounter. As TNW points out, measuring this kind of usage is hardly a perfect science, but as you can see from the trend line in the graph above, this is the way things have been going for some time now. Rats! Just when Internet Explorer was starting to get good.

We know eating red meat can kill us andmake us feel happy but the real reason guys eat it? It makes them feel manly. According to scientists, red meat is synonymous with masculinity making it desirable for guys who view themselves as masculine.
According to the paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, both men and women view red meat as "macho and masculine". In one of their studies, "the top 5 most masculine foods were, in order of most to least masculine: medium-rare steak, hamburger, well-done steak, beef chili and chicken. And the most feminine foods, from most to least, were: chocolate, peach, chicken salad, sushi and chicken."

Brian Wansink, the study researcher and director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, said that the masculine association with red meat matters to red-eating masculine men:

May 20, 2012

Even though the cushions on your couch can be a black hole for everything from pocket change to the TV remote, they're also a handy place to quickly hide stuff when company visits. And it's that exact idea that inspired Jess Fügler's Jam Sofa.

A set of stacked cushions provide a deep crevasse in the middle where you can store magazines, various remotes, and probably even a sandwich and a handful of Doritos for later. The possibilities are endless. The sofa—or lounge to be more exact—also does away with the need for a coffee table as a place to keep coffee table books. And even standing lamps are no longer necessary thanks to a custom lighting accessory that can slide between the cushions. More here.

Sulley as the Hulk and the Incredibles as Captain America and Black Widow? Wonderful. But seriously, mashing up Pixar characters with The Avengers is beautiful. J. M. Walter created this Pixar/Avengers combo and I've decided that it'd be the funnest superhero movie ever. Or best cartoon I've ever seen. More here.

May 19, 2012

At some point in your life you're going to have to give up the dream of sleeping in an awesome car bed. So as an alternative, you might want to consider a car-shaped couch instead.

Created by design and fashion studio Bless, the No35 Automatica Carcanapé couch is stitched and stuffed to look like a run-of-the-mill hatchback—and that coupled with its soft gray fabric might actually make it seem not so outlandish if added to your living room suite. The attention to detail is remarkable, right down to side mirrors and wiper blades. More here.

While the main thing that would make Raspberry Pi's diminutive $25 / $35 Linux setups better would be if we could get our hands on them faster, the team behind it is already working on improvements like this prototype camera seen above. The add-on is slated to ship later this year and plugs into the CSI pins left exposed right in the middle of each unit. According to the accompanying blog post, the specs may be downgraded from the prototype's 14MP sensor to keep things affordable, although there's no word on an exact price yet. Possible applications include robotics and home automation. More here.

May 18, 2012

In case you just woke from a coma at the center of the earth's core, Facebook's IPO blasts off today. And here's a casually obnoxious reminder from Mark Zuckerberg, who has something to do with this, if you weren't sure.

The status update—Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on NASDAQ. — with Chris Cox and 4 others—demonstrates the dynamic flexibility of the Facebook Timeline™, which allows you to share the moments of your life that matter most, and include those Friends™ who were along for The Ride™ with you. It was also rigged by a team of Facebook engineers to trigger at the exact moment Zuck activated the NASDAQ opening button bell, further making him the least relatable 28-year-old in the history of people in their 20s. More here.

Looking at this dismantled Fuji X100, it quickly becomes apparent that staring at exploded gadgets will never get old. Left for dead after suffering fatal water damage, the X100 donated it's body to the internet, providing eye candy for us all to ogle at.

Photographer James Maher took the camera apart piece by piece—which involved removing 130 screws and 152 parts—and photographed every step of the process, which you can check out here.

First the Wall Street Journal said the next iPhone will have a four-inch screen, then Reuters agreed, and now Bloomberg's sources are saying the same thing. Bloomberg are also reporting, however, that Steve Jobs was closely involved with the design process.

In some ways that's a little surprising because, back in 2010, Jobs famously criticized large phones. He didn't think anybody would ever want to carry a big phone, going as far as saying that "no one's going to buy" one. The market has since proved him wrong and, if we're to believe Bloomberg's reporting, clearly Jobs had changed his mind before his death in October last year.

With so many reports floating around about Apple's shift to a four-inch screen, it's beginning to seem inevitable. If you're a small-screen fan, now might be a good time to brace yourself. More here.

May 17, 2012

The Sun's rays power virtually all vegetative growth on the face of the Earth, or at least they used to. A new discovery by a team at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany will coerce plants into growing in total darkness.

Sunlight actually does more than simply provide plants with metabolic energy—it also activates photoreceptor cells called Phytochromes that, in turn, switch on physical processes like germination and blossoming. The study, which was just published in The Plant Cell journal, has devised an alternative means of jump-starting these same processes—relying on chemicals rather than the sun. The team discovered that feeding the substance "15Ea-phycocyanobilin" to seedlings chemically activates the same photoreceptors that natural light would, inducing the same development as those in a control group that were grown normally.

This discovery of course is still far from commercially viable but, if it does pan out, Tilman Lamparter, the director of the study, believes that it could have vast applications throughout the agriculture and research sciences. "Blossoming of flowers or development of the photosynthesis system may be controlled much better in the future," Lamparter told R&D Mag. "These findings would be of high use for agricultural industry in the cultivation of flowers or biomass production, for instance." More here.

Millions of us start the morning with a coffee and think nothing of it. But new medical research suggests that it could be helping you live longer—if you drink enough of it.

The large-scale study, which is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that men who drank six cups of coffee or more every day were 10 per cent less likely to die during the 14 years of the study. Women who drank six cups or more were 15 per cent less likely to die over that same period. The result, fairly obviously, suggests that coffee drinkers live longer.

The researchers have also shown that the effect is seen across almost all causes of death, including heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, and infections. The effect, however, seems to decline with lower consumption—and a single cup of coffee a day was found to have negligible effect.

Dr Neal Freedman, one of the researchers from the National Cancer Institute, Department of Health and Human Services, in Rockville in Maryland, USA, explains:

"Coffee contains more than 1000 compounds that might affect the risk of death. The most well-studied compound is caffeine, although similar associations for caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee in the current study and a previous study suggest that, if the relationship between coffee consumption and mortality were causal, other compounds in coffee—for example, antioxidants, including polyphenols—might be important."

All of which means, of course, that next time someone says you're drinking too much coffee, you know exactly what to say. More here.

May 16, 2012

Rolex watches are generally known for their use of opulent materials and straightforward designs that don't exactly scream playful. But this customized Submariner, designed by the Bamford Watch Department, eschews the diamonds and gold and platinum in favor of something a little more sleek and stripped down. Ever think you'd see a Rolex packaged with a NATO band?

And though it may not scream luxury, we all know that the guts inside of a Rolex are what make it as vaulable as what's on the outside. 41 of these rarities were produced, each with their own certificate of authenticity. But aside from the black steel casing and the $17,500 pricetag, the design of the watch face is easy enough to understand, but just weird enough to make it stand out from a typical Rolex release. More here.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the next iPhone will have a display which measures "at least 4 inches diagonally." Quoting sources familiar with Apple's supply chain, they also suggest that production of the device is due to commence next month.

The Journal identifies LG Display, Sharp, and Japan Display Inc. as the three major panel suppliers for the new larger screen. There's been much talk about a larger screen appearing on the iPhone—some of it nonsense—but this WSJ report adds weight to rumors that were circulated by iLounge earlier this month. It's beginning to look like a four-inch screen could, perhaps, maybe, possibly, at a push make an appearance. More here.

May 15, 2012

One day, when the price is low enough, we would be able to send actual letters and packages to space. But what would a mail address look like? Example: what's the street and zip code of the Internation Space Station?

Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit asked himself that very same question during his stay up there:

It occurred to me that Space Station is a place as deserving of an address as other frontier stations like McMurdo Base or the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Base in Antarctica. These places have formal addresses, complete with zip codes.

So, if you wanted to send a gift to Don, say a Soda Stream Soda Maker or a new JackBack for his iPhone 4, which address should you use?

My sleep station is located in the fifth deck space of Node 2. From an Earth-based perspective, I pop out of my sleep station as if I were coming out of the floor. I am thus situated on the International Space Station (ISS) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with an orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees (the angle of our orbit plane to the equator) and an average altitude of 400 kilometers. It occurred to me that my address should be:

Node 2, Deck 5
ISS
LEO 51.603

The first three digits of your space zip code would be your orbital inclination and the last two a designator for your particular space station, with ISS being the third in this location (after the Salyut series and Mir).

According to Don, that postal code would be good until they get one hundred stations in orbit.

OK, so we got the address. Now the final question is: would Amazon Prime cover shipping to the ISS? More here.

May 14, 2012

With Ivy Bridge out, there's a ton of great new desktops, ultrabooks, and gaming rigs coming out over the next few months. But they're all under the shadow of the other major release, Windows 8. Good news for anyone taking the plunge, though: Windows 8 upgrades will be available for just $15 if you buy a Windows 7 machine after June 2.

For previous updates to Windows, Microsoft had given free upgrades to late-cycle buyers. But Microsoft megablogger Paul Thurrott dug up the $15 price, and it seems fairly legitimate. The upgrade will also only cover Windows 8 Pro, not the standard version that most users would probably buy on their own. More here.

It turns out the tried-and-true technique of simply unzipping a sleeping bag when it gets too hot inside wasn't good enough for some people. Someone, somewhere, demanded more options, which led to the creation of this vented bag which looks like it's endured a bear attack or two.

In addition to a long zipper running up the edge, this $120 sleeping bag has four or five additional zippers running across it allowing a finicky camper to decide how much of their body they wan't to leave exposed. The creation looks like it would function better as a straight jacket than a way to stay warm when roughing it, but it's got enough micro-fiber insulation to keep you toasty down to 20º F. More here.

Remember Apple's new iPad WiFi + 4G? Well, forget that moniker, as this variant of the company's latest slate has been quietly re-dubbed as the iPad WiFi + Cellular. As noticed by 9to5Mac, the change occurred within the last "24-48 hours" across many of Apple's region-specific webstores (update: and retail locations), including (but not limited to) those for the US, UK, Australia, Canada and various countries in Asia.

In many regions the best you'll get out of the slate is HSPA-connectivity, even though it's also equipped for LTE -- something that Apple itself had considered good enough to market it as 4G despite offering refunds to customers in Australia who (like many others) couldn't officially partake in its LTE. Interestingly, 9to5Mac also notes that a similar change hasn't made its way over to the iPad 2, which still has its cellular-equipped variant named, iPad 2 WiFi + 3G. More here.

May 13, 2012

Could you live without broadband at home? I don't know if I could, but Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak can. That's what he has recently said in Australia talking about his home in Los Gatos, California:

I don't have broadband at my home. I, Steve Wozniak, don't have broadband at my home. I live one kilometre out of the main part of town. Broadband is a monopoly in my town—that means you can get it from a cable company, but I don't have cable. There are 50 companies that want to sell me DSL, but they've all got to go through the Horizon wires—the local phone company—and I've got one of the two worst Horizons in the country. And so I can't get broadband in my house.

May 12, 2012

Inspired by the graphic novel "Five Fists of Science" -- and perhaps encouraged by the plucky MIT student who made his own Tesla coil hat and survived -- a DIYer named Rob designed a Tesla coil gun, which he says is fully functional.

Rob used a Nerf gun cast in aluminum for the housing and created a high voltage switch with a 3D powder printer. The gun is powered by an 18V ion drill battery and a flyback transformer housed inside a PVC plumbing end cap. Though Rob has yet to fire the gun, photos show what he says are sparks from the setup, and a demo clip is on the way. While video proof is always nice, so is preserving your life. More here.

Designer Jung Soo Park has managed to drastically improve the functionality and capabilities of the lowly hammer. But he didn't accessorize it with useless add-ons only good for attacking non-existant zombies. Instead, he added a magnet to the handle for wrangling nails. Genius.

And while Park's Neo Hammer isn't available for sale—it's just a concept—even the most inept handyman should be able to hack their own tool with this functionality. Just find yourself some strong glue, and an even stronger magnet, and you'll never have to hold another nail in your mouth again. More here.

May 11, 2012

Inspired by awkward picnics where a poor sap stands because there aren't enough seats around the table, the Expandable Portable Table's aluminum construction allows it to pull off an nifty eponymous trick: it can almost double its length to accomodate up either four or six guests, so everybody can have a place (if everybody is six people).

Its aluminum construction also adds two major features: no splinters, because rotting wood tabletops are the worst. And when the picnic is over and the table is sticky with ketchup and mustard, you can simply hose down the surfaces. Then it's pretty easy to carry home, because it packs flat. More here.

There's nothing quite like a first impression, is there? That one chance to announce that hey, this is me. Do you present yourself as funny? Kind? Knowing? Blasé? Or maybe just as the special kind who thinks these iPhone unlock screen business cards are a swell idea.

Credit where it's due: These are very well-executed facsimiles. But when you hand someone a business card with an iPhone unlock screen with your picture on it on the front and personal info iOS-style on the back, you're giving them more than just your phone number. More here.

May 10, 2012

You can operate your tablet and your smartphone by touch, but what if you could do the same with say, nutritional labels or price tags?

A research team headed up at Harvard University has developed paper electronic touch pads that cost just 25 cents per square meter. That means a small screen would be so cheap you could throw it out when you don't need it. Not exactly something people are doing with their iPads.

These inexpensive displays are made out of paper that has been coated in aluminum and a transparent polymer. With the aid of an external circuit, the metallized material becomes a capacitive surface. While the paper is super cheap, the challenge now is in finding equally affordable power sources, as well as reasonably-priced, flexible electronics.

The fields where this invention could be used run the gamut from entertainment to medicine to education. Imagine answering multiple choice questions on a test printed on touch paper. The researchers have already come up with a secure box with a keypad that makes you type in a code in order to enter it. More here.

Usain Bolt is Jamaica's not-so-secret weapon for shattering track and field records. But at this summer's Olympic games, Nike's cooked up its own secret weapon—a track suit dimpled like a golfball—that will help athletes from countries like the United States, Germany, and Russia chase him down.

The Pro TurboSpeed, as Nike calls it, leaves no doubt as to what the suit is designed to do. Taking inspiration from what is probably the world's laziest sport, golf, the suit is covered in hundreds of tiny dimples designed to reduce its aerodynamic drag. And after thousands of hours of testing in a wind tunnel, Nike claims it can cut 100-meter dash times by as much as 0.23 seconds compared to the company's previous generation track suits. Which of course could easily be the difference between a world record, a medal, or not placing at all.

The suits are also designed to be as comfortable as possible to not hinder an athlete's performance. They're created with fabrics that are lighter than ever, and have all of the elastics and edge finishes placed on the outside so there's nothing rubbing against their skin that could distract them. More here.

Scientists from the institut polytechnique Grenoble INP and the Centre Technique du Papier have developed a novel new product so gratuitous, it almost seems necessary: a silver-crystal coated wallpaper that can block neighbors from freeloading off your Wi-Fi network. The silver crystals are arranged in such a way that they are able to block certain wireless frequencies, not least of which is the same frequency as a WiFI router.

But, what about just setting up a password-protected network? I don't know. You most certainly can—and should—do that. But if, for whatever reason, an open network is what you desire, this silver snowflake-speckled wall-covering will have your back. Unless you have windows. They're still working on a clear coating with protective power equal to that of the paper.

Also, there will of course be somebody out there who will buy this, someone who both delights in a room covered floor-to-ceiling in metallic snowflakes and believes said remediation is superior to setting a password (which is free, mind you—this wallpaper, when it's released in 2013, will cost about as much as mid-grade conventional wallpaper). More here.

May 9, 2012

The laser in this video, not surprisingly, comes courteous of Wicked Lasers. Specifically, its 1W Spyder III Krypton which blasts through these specially weighted balloons like they were well: inflated balloons. But it's still fun to watch it tearing through 100 of them one after the other. And maybe next time they can fill the balloons with something more volatile than just air.

Imagine loading this table up with snacks on the top shelf and beverages on the bottom, then rolling it out to your immaculately decorated modern living room for some serious hedonism—maybe a long movie marathon or a serious gaming session. Sure, there are lots of glorified TV trays that can do that. But few do it with the grace and sophistication of the Chariot table.

Designed by Italian designer Gam Fratesi for boutique Casamania, the Chariot's visual differentiation comes from its simplicity. There are few parts; the entire piece is comprised of acetate shelves, wooden wheels, and a metal handle to keep it together. But it's still visually striking: most food trolleys minimize the wheels, but this piece of furniture has wheels are comparable in diameter to your car's. It's available now, but the price is only by request. More here.

You no longer have to be a smuggler who drops his shipments at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser to be frozen in carbonite. As part of its Star Wars-themed weekends, Disney World is now offering that service to all of its guests.

But you don't have to worry about how you're going to get home afterwards because they don'treally freeze you in carbonite. Instead, when you enter the 'Carbon Freezing Chamber' several cameras capture your facial features from all sides, and the resulting 3D model is used to create an eight-inch carbonite figurine featuring your likeness.

At $100 it makes for one expensive souvenir, and it takes four weeks for it to be delivered. Which makes sense given how long it takes to print a 3D model, but having to wait is still pretty lame. You can also order additional copies, but they'll set you back $75 each. More here.

For the parents who have obviously forgotten that most children are borderline sociopaths when it comes to teasing one another, this sweater will pretty much guarantee your kid will be bully fodder until he graduates from high school—probably college.

The Seven/Eight Year Math Sweater is hand-knit of machine-washable wool and designed to fit the average 1st or 2nd grader. According to Etsy shop proprietor Amarinalevin HandKnits:

The main body of the sweater is a pattern of adding numbers in block shapes. There are also little x's in black. Circling the bottom in green on a dark blue background are Fibonacci numbers. Also circling the bottom and wrists in dark blue on periwinkle is the symbol pi. The back and front are identical. The sleeves have descending and ascending blocks with the prime numbers. Circling the wrists in green on a dark blue background are the various mathematical functions of add, subtract, multiply, and divide. The neck, wrist, and bottom trim is varying shades of green with blue stripes.

May 8, 2012

They might be helping the environment, but with everything banging around in that large re-usable shopping bag, your fresh fruits and vegetables don't always get from the store to the stove unscathed.

Made with a strategic combination of cotton, canvas, and nylon mesh, the Mercado bag's got six interior pockets and three large compartments so you can separate softer delicate items like produce, from harder items like cans and bottles. It's probably also the perfect bag for the obsessively organized, since you can spend hours at the checkout resorting your groceries until you find the perfect arrangement to get everything home safely.

But the best feature of the $25 bag is the adjustable over-the-shoulder strap that lets you carry everything home while keeping your hands free to answer the phone or fumble with keys. Why do most re-usable bags assume that everyone only has to carry them from the driveway to the kitchen? More here.

Unlike backup batteries which have to occasionally be plugged into a wall for hours like your various devices, the fuel cell charger uses small cartridges—about the size of a cigarette lighter—filled with butane to generate power. Pricing for the charger hasn't been revealed just yet, but the replacement fuel cartridges are expected to sell for roughly the same price as a Starbucks coffee. Possibly forcing you to choose between your addictions: caffeine, or browsing Facebook.

Each cartridge is able to fully recharge a dead iPhone from ten to fourteen times, which helps make the cost of the replacements more reasonable when you break the down the per-charge price. The charger should particularly appeal to those who travel a lot, since the fuel cartridges are allowed on planes just like cigarette lighters. And a few dollars to recharge your phone again and again is a far better solution than scouring airport lounges looking for an available outlet. More here.

It's no secret that people are talking on the phone less. We're texting, we're emailing, we're Gchatting, we're Facebooking. There have been many articles bemoaning the death of the phone call in recent months, and Nielsen said in a December report that voice calls have dropped by 12 percent since 2009, while text messaging has absolutely blown up.

With no dearth of mediums on which to communicate, our attentions are divided. But is it possible that we've developed an actual fear of talking on the phone?

Salon's Sarah Hepola argues that this so-called Telephobia is a very real thing.

It's just plain scary to talk to other people. We avoid it not because people don't matter—but because they do. And each of us brings emotional baggage to to these interactions. when my phone rings, and I don't recognize that number—forget it. I'm too scarred by the years I spent dodging credit card companies to take that kind of dare. I also don't jump off cliffs, or do cartwheels on the highway. In fact, it's amazing to me that there was a time when the phone rang, and someone just answered it. Who could it be? Could it be the guy who was currently making your heart pound? Oooh, let's pick it up and find out! Now, when I see an unfamiliar number, I feel nothing but outrage.

A good portion of that is, in fact, crazy talk. We are constantly inundated with information about other people. Pictures from their vacations, posts about their ailing grandmothers, rants about their horrible bosses. Sometimes you just want to flip off the noise. Are we over-saturated? Yes. But are we actually so scared of human contact that we can't stomach a phone call?

Telephobia is hogwash. The truth is, it's an excuse for the fact that communicating has gotten easier, and a by-product of that is we've gotten lazier. More here.

May 7, 2012

In The Avengers movie, S.H.I.E.L.D. has a hell of a time assembling the superheroes to battle an alien army attacking the planet. But convincing them would have been far easier for Nick Fury had they all known that joining forces would have spawned these awesome flash drives.

Available in four different versions including Thor's hammer, Captain America's shield, Iron Man's helmet, and the Hulk's decapitated fist, the 8GB flash drives include retractable USB connectors and can be yours for $40 a pop. Sadly, both Hawkeye and Black Widow are once again left out of the party, proving that unless you've got super powers or billions of dollars, you're just too hard to market to the masses. Get them here.

Besides keeping your teeth sparkly, toothpaste offers a wide range of cleaning, cosmetic—even healing abilities around the house. Just be sure to use the white pasty stuff, not gel. And for any of these tips that call for an actual toothbrush, just consider that tool off-limits for the mouth from here on out.

1. Perfume your palms

Cutting onions, cleaning fish, or handling garlic can leave a strong odor on your hands. Wash them with toothpaste to remove the smell.

2. Clean your Jewelry

Use a soft toothbrush with a tiny amount of toothpaste to brush dull metal jewelry, then rinse and polish it to a shine with a soft cloth. Soak seriously grungy metal in a cup of water with dissolved toothpaste. Don't use it to get a pearly white finish on actual pearls—toothpaste damages the surface.

3.Put paste on a damp sponge to wipe crayon off painted walls

4. Defog goggles

The mild abrasive in toothpaste is perfect for removing the crud that causes your sporty eyewear to fog up. As a preventative measure, just lightly rub toothpaste inside a diving mask, motorcycle goggles, or on a hockey helmet face guard. Wipe and rinse the surface clean. (Note: YMMV—toothpaste can remove special coatings like anti-glare treatments.)

5. Clear zits

Cover pimples with a dab of toothpaste before you hit the sack, then wash your face clean in the morning. This works for bug bites and bee stings too—just remove the stinger first. The paste will dry out and shrink your offending blemishes.

6. Do your nails

Toothpaste works on toenails and fingernails like it does on teeth. Clean your nails with a toothbrush and paste to make them strong and shiny.

7. De-funk a bottle

Wash baby bottles with toothpaste and a bottle scrubber, making sure to rinse them very well with water. The paste will get rid of that nauseating sour milk smell.

8. Remove soap scum

Rub a glass shower door with a damp sponge and a squirt of toothpaste. For heavy scum and soap stains, let the toothpaste sit on the door for several minutes before rinsing it off.

9. Polish chrome faucet fixtures

10. Hide drink rings

If you aren't fanatical about putting coasters under your drinks, then you probably have water rings on your wooden furniture. Rub them off with toothpaste and a soft cloth.

11. Remove stains

Scrub a carpet stain with toothpaste on an abrasive brush, then rinse with water. Tough stains require a couple of scrubbings. Toothpaste can also remove stains in cotton clothes, but it doesn't work for all types of fabric.

Now that RIM has shown a preview of BlackBerry 10, more rumors are surfacing about the updated OS.

The latest, from CrackBerry, claims that the platform will have a new screen sharing feature, which means you could show someone what's on your phone's display during a video call or while you're messaging. It's something you can already do on the desktop, as with Skype, for example, and it would be a very useful addition for mobile. Images of the OS also show that it will finally get a native Twitter app, something it desperately needs.

There are a few other tidbits that popped up on the forum, one being that the plug has been pulled on a 10-inch PlayBook. RIM has decided to focus its efforts on the existing 7-inch model. Additionally, a 4G version of the tablet should be released next month, as possibly well as updated Wi-Fi models, in order to support BBM.

And what about the first BlackBerry 10 phone? CrackBerry says it will be the BlackBerry Colt 2. The only problem is, there's no release date for the sleek new OS yet. More here.

May 6, 2012

LEDs are not only incredibly energy-efficient, but they're also small enough to be squeezed into the tiniest of gadgets. Or in the case of the Lite Lite, a simple piece of paper that folds into a working flashlight.

There is some assembly required, of course, but it's as simple as folding a piece of paper into a long square tube and slipping an elastic band around one end to hold it together. That's it. The$13 flashlight is powered by a single cell-sized battery which should actually keep it shining for a while, and turns on automatically whenever you grasp it. More here.

Kickstand lovers rejoice! These come in four colors -- gray, granita (red), navy blue and black -- the latter featuring a tweaked design with an integrated kickstand. Unlike most third-party products, build quality is top-notch -- the accessories use a precision-molded flexible plastic shell covered in a soft touch finish.

The kickstand is made of a metal alloy and is spring-loaded, but blocks access to the micro-USB port when in use. While the cases protect the back and sides of the One S, the front remains exposed to potential damage. Availability is slated as "soon", but pricing is $24.99 for the plain model and $39.99 for the kickstand version.

May 5, 2012

Overhead lighting is possibly the least flexible way to illuminate a room. Flip a switch, the bulb goes on, and light shines down. End of story. It you want to switch up the lighting for, say, a little more mood, you're out of luck. Unless you've chosen the impossibly clever Greta pendant lamp, which can throw light onto your ceiling with the pull of a drawstring.

Designed by Whatswhat, a trio of young designers who met at school, Greta began as a class project but is now a fully-realized piece which can add some personality to your living room. The 22-inch tall lamp comes in six colors and is priced like the attractive centerpiece it is. But some will find it worth it for the ability to see a room in a new light by pulling a string. More here.

The Bübi Bottle may look like a normal plastic water container, but it's actually made from firm, yet supple, silicone. This means you can roll it up when you're done to save space, but we wouldn't suggest reaching for it in a bar brawl.

It's probably not going to help you win any fights, but it can certainly help you recover from one. The bottle's flexibility, combined with the insulating properties of silicone, means it can pull double duty as a hot water bottle for soothing your bruises. It's like getting two bottles for the price of one, or rather the price of two in this case seeing as it costs $30. More here.

Granted it's not quite, you know, organ donation, but Rovio's offering up some Facebook magic of its own. The casual game maker has rolled out the Share & Play feature, which lets users embed their latest Angry Birds level onto their friends' Timelines for some slingshot-happy bragging rights. Sharing goes beyond just Facebook however -- you can embed the playable level on other sites as well.

May 4, 2012

The PoP Video pairs up with iPod touches (3rd / 4th generation) and iPhones (4 / 4S) via Apple's proprietary 30-pin connector, essentially turning your device into an unorthodox pico projector. According to PoP's site, the 3.5 ounce peripheral's capable of 960 x 540 video output and can give you up to two hours of "playtime" on a single charge -- achieved by way of micro-USB.

It all wouldn't be worth it without the free iOS app, though, which lets folks tinker with settings and do what it's intended to do: project videos, pics as well as browsing within Safari. The $99 PoP Video is up for pre-order now here.

Microsoft has recently been dribbling out news of the media functionality of Windows 8, and little has been surprising. But here's something weird: unless you buy the Media Center version of the OS, Windows won't offer any native facility for DVD playback.

Of course, you'll be able to use a piece of free third-party software, like VLC, to watch a DVD. And to make it clear, we are only talking about video DVDs, not data DVDs. But, uh, it still seems like somewhat of a step back in time. So what gives?

The Windows developers justify the decision by explaining DVD use on computers is "in sharp decline", adding that it would have to spend "a significant amount in royalties" to offer support for optical media. Instead, online media is the focus for Windows 8: H.264, VC-1, MP4, AAC, WMA, MP3, those kinds of file types.

So, what seems like an odd decision is just a big money-saver for Microsoft. And it won't really affect end users, who can just download a piece of free software. But that doesn't stop it feeling plain weird.

May 3, 2012

There's nothing like a heaping serving of perfect, barely melted ice cream. But when you take the tub out of the freezer, it's so hard and cold, you have to use some serious elbow grease to force out a proper scoop .

You just can't wait, either. The good news is now, you don't have to. Japanese designer Naoki Terada has invented heat-conducting spoons that slice right through your rock solid ice cream, softening as it cuts through the frosty fare.

Tereada deserves some kind of medal for his innovative utensil, dubbed 15.0%, a reference to the Japanese regulation that requires ice cream to include 15 percent milk solids. With a wide handle, the spoon is designed with the shape of your hand in mind, in order to give you more power when you exert the brute force to required to extract your desert from the carton. More here.

Made out of aluminum, it comes in three styles specific to different flavor, each shaped for optimum bowl-scraping. The vanilla version has an egg-shaped tip, the chocolate model comes with an angular end, and the strawberry one is more like a spork. While the spoon is supposed to be sturdy enough to help you gorge on ice cream, you might not have the strength to resist.

A stay-at-home mom was out walking her dog recently when she stumbled upon a weird, 17-gram rock. It turned out to be 4 to 6 billion years old. And from space. And it's worth $20,000. Is El Dorado County due for another gold rush?

Space rocks have been on the county's mind ever since a mini-van-sized meteorite exploded over it, creating a sonic boom. Tiny fragments of the rock—which predates the formation of the sun—were scattered all over the hills, setting off a red alert to fanatics of a certain stripe. the local CBS affiliate reports that thousands of geologists, scientists, and treasure hunters have descended upon the town from all over the world hoping to get their own piece of precious space rock. Brenda Salverson, the lucky local mom, isn't the first to find a chunk of the pie. At least one professional hunter found some fragments, and if people keep hitching their wagons for gold country—many other's will likely get lucky as well. More here.

You probably go jogging because it makes you less fat and it is less humiliating than being yelled at through a 60-minute spinning class. But according to a new examination of the Copenhagen City Heart study, jogging less than two hours per week can add years to your life.

The Copenhagen City Heart study started in 1976, around the time that the jogging boom happened, and followed 20,000 men and women, aged 20 to 98. Of the group, there were 1,116 male joggers and 768 female joggers. When their mortality rates were compared with the main group, the men lived 6.2 years longer than non-joggers, and women 5.6 years longer. Even crazier? The amount of exercise needed to drastically increase your lifespan isn't much at all. Just one to two and a half hours per week, split over two or three sessions. More here.
Sure, folks who at least make the effort to run a little bit every week might also be taking care of themselves in other ways. The lesson? Stop being such a lazy turd. Or if you're already pretty active, you are probably going to live to be older than your lazy turd friends. Really, though, rippling abdominals aside, five or six years tacked on to the end of your life for a few hours' worth of effort a week is a pretty good deal.

May 2, 2012

You should never save your place in a book by laying it face down. When it's bookmarked that way, its spine breaks and the binding will never be the same again. But if you're reading next to this beautiful book table, you can probably get away with it.

Designed by German studio Voigt Dietrich, this table's design does two things very efficiently: it houses books while serving as a bookmark. Simply put the tome you're reading across its peak, and your page will be saved until the next time you want to read. The table also includes a flat surface for objects that need a level place to rest (like, almost everything.) More here.

Been itching for Facebook's iPhone-dedicated Messenger app to make its way over to the iPad? Maybe for the iPhone variant to finally reap the benefits of Skype video chat integration as well? Well, according to 9to5Mac, Camp Zuckerberg is testing both in-house, with the latter planned to hit iPhones this summer.

According to the site, one of its trustworthy tipsters was able to grant it access to beta versions of the new apps, and it has the pictures to prove it. Unsurprisingly, the Messenger app for iPad is described as simply a sized-up port of the iPhone version, but surely the bump would be appreciated by many if it ever gets officially released. Perhaps more interesting, though, is having Skype video chat baked into the iPhone version -- tapping an arrow next to a contact initiates your video session, and9to5Mac reports that it's "smooth most of the time." More here.

Nemo Equipment's Helio Pressure Shower just might be the gear that finally gets me to go camping. This small, freestanding pressure-pump shower derives its heat from the sun and travels light at just about 2lbs all packed up.

Helio's foot pump and spray nozzle (which comes at the end of a 7-foot hose) provide a steady stream of pressurized water for your warm outdoor rinse-off—which, if its 11-liter bag is full, will last for between 5 and 7 minutes.

Just in time for camping season, The Helio Pressure Shower will be available this June. More here.

May 1, 2012

Uguard.me's adhesive skins provide a more svelte alternative to bulky cases for protecting your phone. But they're also made with a special resin material that's slightly sticky to the touch. So they provide a bit of extra grip in the hand, and will actually stick to a smooth surface like a window.

Here's the kicker, though. The skin doesn't hold indefinitely. So while you could stick your phone to your car's window for some hands-free GPS navigation, it would only be a matter of time before it lost its grip and fell off. So it's best to think of these skins as a game of Cupertino Roulette that could end up costing you a lot more than just $20. More here.

Wax seals have been used for millennia to guarantee a document's authenticity. If you got a letter with an intact seal, you could be assured that what you're reading was legit. The Top Secret USB does the same thing for your digital documents—literally.

The Top Secret is a porcelain USB drive available in 2, 4, or 8GB models. Its casing includes a small indentation where, once sensitive documents have been loaded onto the drive, a small amount of molten wax is poured and imprinted with an intricate design from the included metal stamp. Once the wax cools, there is no way to open the drive and access the files without breaking the seal—your recipient can rest assured that they are receiving the unadulterated files. The Top Secret is currently available here and is available for $46 (2GB), $52 (4GB) and $59 (8GB).